Good morning. 
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 6:32 AM and sunset 4:44 PM, for 10h 12m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand four hundred fifty-fifth day.
On this day in 1960, Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case.
Recommended for reading in full —
The Atlantic presents The Case Against Donald Trump:
Donald Trump is the worst president this country has seen since Andrew Johnson, or perhaps James Buchanan, or perhaps ever. Trump has brought our country low; he has divided our people; he has pitted race against race; he has corrupted our democracy; he has shown contempt for American ideals; he has made cruelty a sacrament; he has provided comfort to propagators of hate; he has abandoned America’s allies; he has aligned himself with dictators; he has encouraged terrorism and mob violence; he has undermined the agencies and departments of government; he has despoiled the environment; he has opposed free speech; he has lied frenetically and evangelized for conspiracism; he has stolen children from their parents; he has made himself an advocate of a hostile foreign power; and he has failed to protect America from a ravaging virus. Trump is not responsible for all of the 220,000 COVID-19-related deaths in America. But through his avarice and ignorance and negligence and titanic incompetence, he has allowed tens of thousands of Americans to suffer and die, many alone, all needlessly. With each passing day, his presidency reaps more death.
Meryl Kornfield reports Ahead of election, experts on authoritarianism warn in joint letter of democracy’s potential collapse:
Fearing the end of democracy as we know it, more than 80 international and American scholars in authoritarianism and fascism wrote an open letter to the public, forecasting a “frightening regression” if safeguards are not put in place.
“Whether Donald J. Trump is a fascist, a post-fascist populist, an autocrat, or just a bumbling opportunist, the danger to democracy did not arrive with his presidency and goes well beyond November 3rd, 2020,” the experts in 20th-century authoritarian populism, fascism and political extremism wrote in a post published Saturday. Scholars from universities in the United States, as well as the United Kingdom, Israel and Italy, criticize Trump but do not endorse Joe Biden in the letter, instead arguing that injustices surfaced by the coronavirus pandemic and heightened nationalism are concerning, no matter the election’s outcome.
The experts, who have knowledge of what led to the rise of past authoritarian and fascist regimes, say democracy is at stake.
“We have seen all of these patterns in our study of the past, and we recognize the signs of a crisis of democracy in today’s world as well,” the group writes. “The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed profound inequalities of class and race across the globe. As the last four years have demonstrated, the temptation to take refuge in a figure of arrogant strength is now greater than ever.”
In a list of sweeping recommendations, the group urges the public to protect science, journalism, the electoral process and pluralism, and denounce misinformation, political violence and greed.
“We need to turn away from the rule by entrenched elites and return to the rule of law,” they write. “We must replace the politics of ‘internal enemies’ with a politics of adversaries in a healthy, Democratic marketplace of ideas.
“Because if we don’t,” the letter concludes, “we will indeed face dark days ahead.”